Medical News Today -- Researchers from The Wistar Institute recently reported that a human adenovirus called AdHu26, once thought uncommon, is not so rare after all. This could be bad news for scientists eager to use engineered AdHu26 human adenoviruses as vaccines against HIV and other diseases. In this approach, adenoviruses, which commonly cause respiratory-tract infections, are rendered relatively harmless before being used as vectors to deliver genes from pathogens, which then stimulate the body to generate an immune response. Yet studies show that a viral vector may be less effective if the vector is based on a type common in a population, because humans will have previously developed immunity to it.